Speech Day

Words from our Year 8 Speech Day Service

Mrs Emma Károlyi, Head

This is a particularly special moment for us all to be together again in celebration, parents, pupils and staff for the first time in over 15 months. Today is an occasion for us to say thank you for another school year together. A chance for us to celebrate our lovely school, to appreciate each other’s achievements and successes, and to reflect on the last academic year. And, my goodness, what a year it has been – we have all lived through a global pandemic! Throughout the most challenging of years, Junior King’s has remained a caring and special place. Our core value of kindness, and the school values of resilience, responsibility, readiness, and respect have remained a central rock of stability while other things, around us changed so much. Now, how many of you enjoy doing jigsaws? I LOVE doing jigsaws. As you know, all the pieces in a jigsaw are of equal importance. Our school is like a jigsaw puzzle in many ways. Each piece of the Junior King’s jigsaw represents a different department or section, made up of groups of important people. Just like a puzzle that is unfinished, no one part of the school can work properly without the others being there. We need to join all the different departments and parts together for the school to run smoothly. One of those pieces of the jigsaw are our parents. You play a really key role in our school. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for giving your children the best head start at Junior King’s. Another very special and central piece of the JKS jigsaw to make the picture whole represents all of you. All our pupils! Year 8, you have all been amazing and a wonderful year group, always setting a fine example to the rest of the school. We have all been on quite a journey together, through the ups and downs of the year, and in and out of isolations, but we have had fun together along the way too. You are at a significant point in your lives. You have reached the top of the Prep School. It may not seem quite real yet, especially for those who have been here since Pre-Prep. Suddenly, you are leaving. Everybody here in this room can probably name more than a few special things about your time at this school. I hope that you will look back on your time at Junior King’s with happiness and affection. Your teachers have given so much of their time and energy to ensure that you are happy, that you achieve and succeed. So, as you start your next journey, remember to equip yourself with these three things you have learned at JKS: ‘Carpe diem’ - Seize the day! Life is precious. Make the most of every day and don’t waste time. When you get to the end of each day, reflect on all that you have achieved. Keep that love of learning you have now and, go on and try new things at your next school. Not only will it stimulate your mind, but it will open up many new and exciting opportunities. Remember our Junior King’s value of kindness. Your actions and words should always be rooted in kindness and humility. This will help you find deeper contentment and happiness in life. All that remains is for me to wish you all well, and to have a lovely summer holiday.

The Very Reverend Dr Robert Willis Dean of Canterbury

As Dean of the Cathedral and also Chair of Governors of Junior King’s School, it’s wonderful to be able to speak to you all online, virtually as we say, and have learned to say. Normally, at this time of year, we would have gathered as a community of Junior King’s in the Cathedral for an end-ofyear service when we would have been singing together and having lots of contributions. But most of our work, this year, has had to be online and that is how I am addressing you this morning. We have had times in the last 12 months when we couldn’t even be together and all our teaching was done online, magnificently by the staff here and I know we all feel a huge debt of gratitude to the staff for teaching online and teaching at the same time when we’ve come back to school in two completely different methods. That’s quite a hard thing to do and your focus changes, but let’s all think about what this year has taught us as well because there have been some good lessons. One of the lessons, I think, has been that we have learned to appreciate so many things that before, we simply took for granted and at the highest part of that list, I would say, we took it for granted that we would always be able to be together, meet our friends, be in the classroom with our teachers, be able to travel and see other people and suddenly, all that stopped, and we found ourselves in lockdown – a new word, and we had to get used to that. As we did so, we began to miss the fact of coming together. Of course, we can do things online and that is wonderful, but it is not quite the same as the excitement of being together in groups. So that we shall look forward to again, but at the same time, when we were in lockdown, we tended to learn different kinds of skills to keep ourselves amused, and I am not talking just about members of the school. I mean people from all over the world, because they suddenly found themselves all by themselves, if they lived alone. Many of them learned different skills of creativity and had a rethink about their lives and how they wanted it to be after we come out of this because God has given us unique creative skills and sometimes we can learn them quite far on in life. But I am sure all of you too will have been doing things which have been enjoyable and at the same time, at the back of your mind, thinking, I wish I could be doing this with so and so. Well, I don’t think it is too long before we shall be able to do that. But, at the same time as I hinted about people right across the world, one of the lessons we have learned is that we have all shared this crisis together as a human race. It’s not just something that has happened to England; it’s not just something that has happened to the United Kingdom, nor to Europe, it has happened everywhere and people have shared resources as best they can. We are better at taking down barriers and having a global concern for the beauty and life of our planet. The silence, which suddenly fell when aeroplanes stopped flying overhead and traffic stopped outside because we were all in lockdown, was something of a gift because it caused us to look around, and last summer was very beautiful. This summer has been a bit wet and cool but we remember looking around and seeing the beauty of this planet, and knowing that it can be attacked by dangers like this pandemic and knowing how we can take steps to protect it. That’s a really big subject, but it is a life-long subject too. Yes, this has been a hard time and it’s so good to be together and know that the health of the school and the vitality of the school is still here. But at the same time, let’s not forget these have been special times and let’s learn some of the lessons of collaborative behaviour, looking after one another and finding gifts that we didn’t know we had inside us of creativity of different sorts because those are precious lessons. As we step forward into a new academic year then let’s say, as we always do to the leavers, please don’t worry. You are still in our hearts and minds and every end is a new beginning. May it be so for us all as we come out of this pandemic and go into the future together